Air pollution is a grave global health threat—and with India suffering from some of the world’s worst air quality, the impact on the health of its people is proportionate. Delhi, for instance, is currently covered in a thick blanket of toxic smog, with the air quality index recording above 450 in several areas, placing it in the 'severe' category.
However, in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, the Central government introduced a fresh, almost absurd point of contention: Is air pollution even causing disease and death?
Responding to two separate questions in the Rajya Sabha, the Union Health Ministry claimed there is no data directly linking air pollution to deaths and diseases, and the Environment Ministry dismissed global AQI monitors as unreliable, insisting that India should rely on its own standards of measurement.
Do these responses have real basis, or are they simply another attempt to downplay a deadly crisis? The Quint asks experts.
No Deaths, No Disease, No Data?
The Union Health Ministry has informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, 9 December, that there is “no conclusive national data to establish a direct correlation between deaths or diseases occurring exclusively due to air pollution.”
In a written reply, Minister of State for Health Prataprao Jadhav said that respiratory ailments and related diseases have multiple triggers, and air pollution is just one of them. Other factors, he said, include food habits, occupational exposure, socio-economic status, medical history, immunity and heredity.
Experts, however, call the statement, "bordering on absurdity."
"There is a difference between ‘the data doesn’t exist’ and ‘the government doesn’t have data’," says Dr Ashwini Setya, a senior gastroenterologist and advisor in Medical Law and Ethics.
"The scientific consensus is that there is overwhelming evidence that environmental pollution increases incidents of mortality," he adds.
The World Health Organization, the leading global health authority, maintains extensive data on disease burden and deaths linked to air pollution worldwide, and it notes,
“The combined effects of ambient and household air pollution are associated with 7 million premature deaths globally, every year.”
In fact, just a few weeks ago, a Lancet report, Countdown on Health and Climate Change 2025, revealed that air pollution from fossil fuels and biomass alone caused 1.6 million deaths in India in 2021. And in 2022, air pollution-linked deaths globally were. in fact. more than the total number of COVID-linked deaths.
The same study found that household (indoor) air pollution from polluting fuels led to 113 deaths per 100,000 people, with higher mortality in rural areas than in urban ones.
It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to see why. Air pollution is a cocktail of particulate matter and toxic gases such as sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides — “all of which are well-established in medical literature as harmful when inhaled in large amounts,” Dr Vikas Maurya, Senior Director and HOD, Respiratory Medicine, Fortis Hospital, New Delhi, tells The Quint.
He explains,
“These particles enter the lungs and then the bloodstream, triggering inflammation across the body and causing damage to the heart, brain and more.”
Apart from the well-established links between air pollution and pulmonary issues such as COPD, asthma and heart damage, many studies have also found strong indirect associations with pregnancy loss, mental health conditions, cognitive issues, and more.
And if international sources or data are considered unreliable, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)’s own experts and studies have repeatedly established and reaffirmed this link.
A 2020 study by ICMR in Lancet Planetary Health found that 1.7 million deaths, or 18 percent of the total deaths in the country in 2019, were attributable to air pollution.
"This is the government’s own body,” says Dr Setya.
"If there is no link between air pollution and health issues then why is the government also talking about all the measures it is taking to minimise air pollution and why do we have all these policies and bodies in place specifically targeted towards curbing air pollution?"Dr Ashwini Setya
‘Multifactorial’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Not Pollution’
On 2 December, Jadhav revealed that new government data and ICMR research shows six major Central government hospitals in Delhi recorded a staggering 2,04,758 cases of acute respiratory illness (ARI) in their emergency departments between 2022 and 2024. Nearly 15 percent of these patients required hospitalisation, a stark indicator of the capital’s chronic air-pollution burden.
At the time, the government acknowledged that “air pollution is one of the triggering factors for respiratory ailments and associated diseases,” even as they emphasised that other factors, including diet, occupation, socio-economic status and pre-existing conditions, contribute just as much when it comes to health effects.
Experts The Quint spoke to say this argument doesn’t hold much water. “When someone dies (of illness), there are generally multiple contributing factors. Take a person who eventually dies of a heart attack; many elements play a role. The person may be a smoker, may have comorbidities like diabetes, or a genetic disposition, etc. It doesn’t negate the possibility that air pollution could be the primary driving force,” Dr Setya explains.
"Long-term inhalation of toxic air accelerates atherosclerosis, raising the risk of heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes exacerbation, and even certain cancers, especially lung cancer," Dr Bharat Gopal, Senior Director & Head of Interventional Pulmonology Medanta Gurugram, adds.
He says, "Continuous exposure can impair immunity, making individuals more vulnerable to viral and bacterial illnesses."
“So the government’s claim that, because death is multifactorial, it cannot be linked to pollution, is simply illogical,” concludes Dr Setya.
India’s Own Data Comes With a Major Question Mark
After the Health Ministry, the Union Environment Ministry told the Rajya Sabha on 11 December that no official global country-wise air pollution ranking exists and that widely quoted international indices, such as IQAir World Air Quality Report, WHO Global Air Quality Database, Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and Global Burden of Disease (GBD) metrics, are not conducted by any official authority.
In a written reply, Minister of State for Environment Kirti Vardhan Singh said, "Countries prepare their own air quality standards based on geography, environmental factors, background levels, socio-economic status and national circumstances."
India does indeed have its own AQI monitoring sytems in place under both state and Central authorities.
But can international air-quality data really be dismissed when the country’s own monitoring system faces persistent questions about accuracy, manipulation and lack of transparency?
Speaking to The Quint for a previous article, Anjal Prakash, Research Director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business said, "Concerns about the accuracy of the CPCB AQI could be valid. The problems include sparse or poorly sited monitors that bias city averages and miss local variations, and issues with instrument calibration and maintenance that can also cause drift or faulty readings."
Earlier this year in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused the government of manipulating AQI readings by sprinkling water near air-quality monitors.
Ground reports by several media outlets also flagged that some stations are located in greener, tree-heavy areas and that data gaps were observed at multiple sites across the city, raising questions about whether actual pollution levels were being masked.
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Delhi government have repeatedly rejected these allegations, maintaining that AQI data is automated, transparent, and tamper-proof. They have also defended measures such as large-scale water sprinkling as part of a “disciplined, data-backed” approach to tackling high pollution levels.
Addressing claims that water sprinklers were deployed near AQI monitors, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, in a recent interview, said, “A hotspot is where there’s the most pollution. What’s the solution? You spray there, you water it...So, you’ll spray only on the hotspot. Does using a monitor bring down the AQI? AQI is like a temperature which you can know from any instrument, so watering it is the only solution which we are also doing.”
Moreover, monitoring infrastructure in many parts of India is far weaker than in tier-1 cities like Delhi, giving a misleading impression of lower pollution levels.
The country has 966 manual stations under the National Ambient Monitoring Programme (NAMP) and 545 real-time CAAQMS stations. Of these, 58 CAAQMS units are inactive, and the active ones are heavily concentrated in tier-1 cities, with very few in tier-2 cities.
"Limited data transparency, inconsistent quality control, and gaps in temporal coverage further undermine confidence on the data."Anjal Prakash